Posted on 12/11/2002 2:06:21 PM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
Dec. 11 — A shower of tiny fish rained down on the village of Korona in the mountains of northern Greece late on Tuesday, Greek television reported, attributing the incident to a mini-tornado.
Villagers discovered the unexpected catch on the banks of Lake Doirani, which lies on the Greek border with the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, following a spell of rough weather.
According to a weather expert at the university of Salonica, in northern Greece, the fish were probably skimmed up from the surface of the lake by a mini-tornado formed during a thunderstorm, a rare but not unknown phenomenon.
Another "up in one place, down in another" dismissal of fish falls!
We used to go on holidays there when I was small (on the Macedonian side of the border). The lake is not deep at all. I think it was only about 10m deep.
I must have taken a strong wind to pick up the fish from the water.
There were some good memories from lake Doiran.
Nope. But there needs to be -- if it can be kept to truly fortean subjects and not get out of control like the "hold muh beer" or "black conservative" ping lists.
"Fortean" comes from the name of Charles Fort, who was among the first serious researchers of odd, unusual, and bizarre events which could not be explained or were ignored by conventional science in the first half of the 20th Century. Some of his books are Lo!, Book of the Damned, Wild Talents and New Lands.
The word was made popular by the magazine Fortean Times which has been around for about 30 years and is available in most book stores.
Fortean subjects include just about anything weird, with fish falls and rains of other objects being classic examples of fortean phemonenae.
Here's a link to the Charles Fort Institute .
"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for only a day. Give a man a GUN, and others will feed him for the rest of his life."
Ripley, and John Hix (who wrote & drew the Strange As It Seems strip, a Ripley clone from the 1930's-1950's) probably got their inspirations from Fort.
Oddly enough, it seems to be the English who have taken the forefront in Fortean Studies while Americans seem to be focused on UFO's & Aliens.
I should add that legitimate fortean things include cryptozoology (my favorite) and unusual archeological subjects as well.
Not that the fall accomplished what the fish really wanted, though. That is, I was walking, not swimming. On dry land, that is. Not along the shoreline.
A crappie development like this must be a fluke. Some would carp, and others would flounder about, but I'd hop off my perch, get in my turbot, and drive on down the pike out of that plaice.
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